Archive for November, 2008

Greetings, kids! We’re taking tonight off so we can fully sleep off this turkey hangover from Thursday. We’ll be back live and in charge next Sunday night, so how’s about you clear your schedule now for three hours of programming? You’ve got us for two hours followed by the Internet’s BEST music show — The Setlist — right after. That’s a good way to spend your Sunday. 🙂

Keep it tuned to Radio360Talk.com — and go check out the new programming if you haven’t already!

I’m a pretty lucky person. I know I like to labor under the pretense that I’m karma’s favorite whipping girl and that I’ve done something very, very bad in a past life to explain why I feel cursed with recurring bad luck.

But I’m really pretty lucky. I’m not 30 years old yet and I’m working at a job I could only have dreamed of as a child. I’m working at a newspaper in a real, big city. And not even just any big city. Arguably, the center of the free world. The capital. The place where it all goes down.

Sometimes, it takes some perspective. Six months ago today, I started my job in D.C. Six months ago Monday, my family thought that the unthinkable actually happened.

So, I thought I’d just use a couple of pictures to show what I’m most thankful for this year. I’m thankful, and so lucky, for so much, but these are the biggest three.

My Dad and Mom. For loving me unconditionally.

She might not get me. I might not get her. Love no matter what.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Take time to today to make sure the ones you love know you love them. Friends, family, the guy who sells you cigarettes at the drive-thru … they all deserve it.

I love Wheeling in all forms. Maybe because it was the first real “city” I knew. Maybe because it’s where I got my start on this crazy newspaper path. Maybe because it’s like no other place on earth.

Today’s blog post is dedicated to two screen grabs from the local media.

Award for “Best Headline of the Week”

Wait … Sensei?!

BOW TO YOUR SENSEI!!

Death isn’t funny. However, the word “sensei” in a headline? Comedy gold.

And next, the award for “Most Unfortunate Web Illustration”

I realize there’s no really good way to illustrate child pornography. I get that. I also get that it’s probably hard to illustrate “Mom’s-Basement-Dweller Should Be Killed By Rabid Pack of Wolves.” But come ON, WTRF. Really? Really? This is what you’ve got. You illustrate your child porn store with a picture of a child … holding a teddy bear … wearing a night shirt. I’d try to avoid this one down the road. Maybe no illustration. Or a picture of Mom’s-Basement-Dweller himself. Just a thought for next time.

First, I’d like to commend you for doing your part in both helping reduce fuel costs for those of us with actual vehicles and helping decrease the amount of alleged gases that contribute to “global warming.” Your dedication to saving money, and the planet, are admirable.

However, I’d like to be frank with you if I may. If you don’t stop parking your f-ing mechanical bicycle in one of the four spaces directly in front of my apartment, I am just … going … to lose it.

Yes, I realize that there is no assigned parking in the complex. I also realize you have the right to park your moped wherever you choose. I have the right to think you’re a dick for it.

With the size of your Big Wheel, you really don’t NEED a parking space, period. You could easily wheel it under the stairs that lead up to your apartment. Chances are, the apartment management won’t even mind. I mean, let’s be honest. It’s half the size of your partner-in-douche, the Vespa owner, who also takes up parking spots right up front.

Let’s put this into proper perspective a minute, shall we? On your girlymobile, you can’t possibly haul cargo. The other night when I came home from a sizable grocery trip, I had to walk completely across the parking lot because, again, you took one of the four spaces directly up front. I carried — by myself — 13 plastic grocery bags about the length of a football field and then up four flights of stairs.

But you know what I do mind? Coming home in the pouring rain with a broken umbrella to find you, again, parked RIGHT up front. Certainly you were already prepared for inclement weather when you took your trike out to the organic coffeehouse to read your book about the Summer of Love and drink your ethically-grown-and-brewed $7 coffee. I, however, wasn’t as prepared after my day spent downtown under florescent lights trying to squeeze four days worth of work into 10 hours.

However, I digress.

Sometimes, when I’m staring out the window of the Metro, I fantasize about covering your prized weeniemobile in lighter fluid and throwing the match. I smile to myself as the heat from your burning, blue-flower-covered scooter warms me from the inside. I see you running from your apartment with your hands flailing yelling, “Whyyyyy?”

I giggle to myself as I tell you why. Because owning something that takes up a quarter of a parking space, while efficient, doesn’t give you the right to be a douchebag about it. Yes, I get it. You’re with it. You’re “green.” I’m black, like my heart.

So, in closing, please stop parking right up front. It’s not cool. You’re harshing my mellow. I promise to donate to any cause of your choosing if you give me the consideration of NOT taking one of the better parking spaces. I think we can agree to these conditions and continue to co-exist peacefully. That’s my goal, of course.

Failure to comply may result in an action for which I may not be held liable. This includes, but is not limited to, toilet papering your scooter, accidentally dropping an egg from my balcony onto the scooter, covering your seat in peanut butter, letting the air out of your tires (not flattening them … I’ll preserve your tires, just empty them) and leaving you passive-aggressive notes with Post-Its on your windshield.

Thanks for your consideration in this manner. We’re all in this community together. Let’s be friends.

The scene: McPherson Square Metro station plaza, 14th and I Streets, 9:10 a.m.

As I walked toward K Street out of the plaza, I got about 20 feet before a woman in a wheelchair rolls in front of me. She’s pretty well groomed, in a ski cap, a heavy coat, a blanket covering her lap, a large Au Bon Pain cup with some change and a couple of loose bills and a few signs covering her wheelchair proclaiming that Jesus would be back and now was the time to repent. Before she wheeled in front of me, I noticed she was shouting prophecies about what was to come.

(For a minute, my mind flashed to that HORRIBLE Angelina Jolie movie “Life or Something Like It” where the guy who plays Monk on TV plays a homeless guy with predictive abilities and tells her she’s got a week to live or something. ‘Cause that would have been allllll I needed to kick off Thanksgiving week — a death prediction.)

I knew immediately that Wheelchair Preacher was familiar. I’ve seen her. I’m sure of it. (I’m actually legendary for my ability to place people — I may not remember names, but faces are forever in my head.) As I scanned her face while she blocked me, I had a clear memory of her standing just outside of Metro Center a few weeks ago carrying a couple of ragged shopping bags and asking for money. I was too far away from her at the time to get the request, but her voice and her face were unmistakable today.

She looked up at me with these empty, glassy gray eyes as if to figure out what I was going to do. (And all of this was happening in about four seconds.) Finally, she spoke.

“Jesus wants you to know that you came into this world with nothing and you’ll leave this world with nothing.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I thought for a minute before I managed:

“Thanks for the heads up. But I’m still not giving you any money.”

She sat, stunned, for a minute before she began quoting scripture. About lambs and slaughter and the trappings of wealth.

I moved around her. I could hear her yelling as I crossed I Street and kept walking down 14th. If she is a holy see, then I continued to solidify my place on the karma food chain. I’m willing to bet, though, that she was just lucky enough to find a wheelchair and some spare poster board (wait … where did she get the poster board and markers?!) and thought a new routine was in order. Either way, I’m glad she didn’t take a page out of the “overdone” playbook and tell me I had a week to live.

As I bought value-brand hot dogs and some off-brand, questionable-looking tortilla chips this weekend, I thought to myself, “Damn you, economy.”

I, however, refused to cheap out on ketchup. Heinz only. Even if I’m scraping pennies out of the cupholder in the car.

But here’s how you voted:

I picked “maybe.” I can choose to be responsible with my cash and invest it in a 401(k) with low-risk investments, but even that wouldn’t have saved you from taking up the tailpipe with this market tank.

Join Jacque and host of the Setlist Paige tonight as B-Dub comes in at the beginning but then slinks away to attend to some “business” and continue to softly mourn the defeat of his football team at the hands of a Wrangler Jeans spokesman.

Here are a few things we’ve got on the plate for tonight, but who knows which way this will end up? We’re definitely taking it light tonight because it’s been a long week, we’re about to hit a holiday and everything goes into insanity overdrive from this point forward (Can you say family visits, pumpkin pie, turkey and grandmas with digestive problems? And that’s just the last time Jacque went home.)

* You think your job is stressful? Get a load of these. (It’s no surprise that coming into the holiday shopping frenzy, we feel for our brothers and sisters in retail).

* Was there REALLY a Captain Morgan? Or Jack Daniels? (If only we could manage the in-studio research)

* Eating that will kill you. No! Just kidding. These myths are dying to be destroyed.

* You ever pass a road sign and think, “Hey! That would be a great band name?” I do. Every day. And after seeing this list, it’s a good idea I’m not involved in picking band names.

* Note to people who take nudie pics with their cell phones: Don’t leave it at McDonald’s.

You can send us a message, also, through the little chatterbox you see on the page. And if you’d like to actually be where the action is, click on the “chat” button and hang out in the room with the rest of us.

We’ll be live at 8 p.m., so we hope you can make it. Yes, we know that ’24’ comes back tonight, but that’s why TiVo exists. Nobody loves Jack Bauer more than me, and I’m putting him on hold.